Assessment Resources and Related Workshops
This is a collection of resources and related workshops that highlight strategies you can use to plan and conduct assessments that both facilitate and measure student learning.
Topics are presented in alphabetical order by title. Depending on the time of year and faculty demand for our services, most of the sessions under “Related Workshops” can be delivered for individual departments upon request. That said, the materials associated with each workshop are always available through our website and serve as valuable reference tools. (Note that some do require a Notre Dame NetID and password to access).
Resources
Enhancing Learning with Low Stakes Assessment and Mastery (Faculty Panel)
Faculty from Math, Chemistry, and Neuroscience share lessons learned when moving from a few high-stakes assessments (exams) to more frequent low-stakes assessments (quizzes) and in one case providing a mastery-based learning opportunity. Includes a recording of the panel and slides.
Inclusive Course Design
Inclusive course design is an iterative process that begins with adopting a reflective and equity-minded approach to teaching and learning. An equity-minded approach involves intentionally applying pedagogical strategies to curriculum development and assessment that engage students in meaningful, relevant, and empowering learning experiences as well as identifying and removing barriers to student success.
Incorporating Multimodal Assessment into Your Course
Multimodal assessments are alternative, often digital, assessments that allow students to demonstrate skills and knowledge in a new way by presenting them in multiple forms. Multimodal assignments can either stand alone as an independent assessment or ask students to re-envision an existing assignment, like an essay, into a different format, like a podcast or infographic.
Provost’s Learning Lightning Talks – September 2021
Several Notre Dame faculty members share short talks (four to six minutes long) detailing various teaching strategies they have employed, including work in assessment and learning analytics.
Resource Guide: Teaching in the Age of AI
This resource guide explains a bit about what generative AI is and how it works while outlining potential uses and approaches to AI in the classroom. Section 4, “Strategies for Effective Teaching in the Age of AI,” shares new ways you might ask students to demonstrate their skills, knowledge, and abilities.
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: What, Why, & How
This post provides an overview of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), a systematic approach to collecting and analyzing data related to your teaching practice and sharing that work with others. Features both a case study and on-campus resources/services related to assessment.
Related Workshops
Alternative/Flipped Finals – Beyond Blue Books and Bubble Sheets
Tired of the traditional blue book and bubble sheet final exam? Instead of having students cram and recall what they learned, why not try a culminating assignment that has them returning, reflecting, and reconstructing the course work and goals to synthesize, culminate, and demonstrate mastery with evidence to tell their learning story?
Effective Grading and Efficient Feedback
This workshop introduces strategies for evaluating your grading criteria, incorporating multiple approaches to providing feedback, and encouraging students to engage with the feedback they receive. It also addresses a few technological tools and techniques that may save you time in providing meaningful feedback to students.
Foundations of Teaching Workshop Series
This four-part series introduces and develops the fundamental skills of effective teaching for graduate teaching assistants (TAs). Topics include communicating expectations, facilitating a class, grading, and teaching critical thinking skills.
Improve Your Teaching & Student Learning With Classroom Research
Explores the landscape of Discipline-Based Education Research (DBER) and Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) while sharing learning research support services and resources such as survey/rubric design, video observations, consent forms, and umbrella IRB. A recording of the workshop is also available.
Introduction to Backward Design
Interested in creating a course from scratch? In this interactive workshop, participants learn and apply strategies for effective course design. Topics include understanding the value and structure of the backward design process as well as drafting learning goals, assessments, and learning experiences that align with each other. A recording of the workshop is also available.
Introduction to Course Design Series
A four-part series focused on the theory and practice of designing courses to enhance student learning. Session 2 is devoted to assessment and exam design.
Introduction to Inclusive Pedagogy
How can we create relevant and accessible learning experiences that support success for all students? In this workshop, we discuss some of the basic principles of, and best practices for, inclusive teaching. Methods for equitable assessment and grading are among the topics covered.
Public Writing as a Tool for Learning
Public writing assignments can be an effective way to engage students, but they are also challenging to design, implement, and evaluate. This workshop draws on the scholarship of teaching and learning, as well as sample assignments from Notre Dame instructors, to outline the risks and rewards of incorporating public writing into college courses and introduce best practices for teaching and assessing such writing.
Teaching and Evaluating Oral Communication
Exploring the opportunities and challenges that emerge in courses with an oral communication focus, this workshop highlights strategies for designing oral assignments and tools for assessing oral communication skills. Instructors who are currently teaching or considering teaching a College Seminar (CSEM) course are especially encouraged to attend.
Universal Design for Learning (UDL)
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a pedagogical framework focused on responding to learner diversity by designing flexible pathways to engage, represent, and express knowledge. This three-part series covers the three components of UDL: The Why of Learning, The What of Learning, and The How of Learning, the last of which is particularly relevant in an assessment context.
Using CIF Questions as a Tool to Improve Teaching and Learning
Course Instructor Feedback (CIF) forms are a means by which Notre Dame students share their thoughts on a class with their teacher at the end of the semester. The tools available here review and explore how you can utilize CIF questions to focus your efforts to improve teaching effectiveness and student learning.
Using Rubrics to Assess Student Work
Rubrics make grading criteria clearer to faculty and students, allow students to turn in better work, and lead to feedback that is more objective and consistent. This workshop focuses on how to develop and use rubrics with both low- and high-stakes assessments.
What to Do After the Test
You’ve graded the exam. Now what? Did the class perform worse than you expected? How do you know if you wrote a bad question or if your students weren’t prepared? This workshop focuses on analysis of exam questions, potential adjustment of student grades, and reflection.
Writing Effective Multiple Choice Questions
Multiple choice tests are to easy to administer, but good and effective questions can be a challenge to develop. Here you can access strategies, resources, and practices for designing questions that are fair, unambiguous, and appropriate, including how to draft both lower- and higher-order multiple choice questions relevant to your discipline.